facade
by kathleenfergie
Summary: Nobody ever asked where the monkeys came from. AU Oneshot.


So this work has been revisited and reedited from its previous post (the original name was 'fraud' and while 'facade' isn't leaps and bounds better I've accepted my lack of title skills) and I believe it's been for the better.

Basically it's pre-Dorothy arc, and it's The Wizard reflecting on how the Wicked Witch(es) came to be, etc. The whole magic/science bit is just something I thought would be fun to play with. The witches are all sisters in my mind (sort of Wicked-esque but let's not cross that bridge).

I apologize for the amount of times I used 'emerald' or 'green.'  
Enjoy, and as always, I'm just a simple soul who owns nothing.

* * *

Nobody ever asked where the monkeys came from.

Such dreaded creatures, their inhuman shrieks filling up the skies, accompanied by the flapping of their wings and that damned woman's maniacal cries. We all knew that she was too far gone to care how many munchkins she killed. I've seen one too many get snatched up by their kind.

In the old days, I would stand in my window and watch her fly, the guilt welling in my stomach like an ulcer. Meanwhile my city sparkled around me, opposite to what I felt inside. They all feared me, and I relished in it. Kept them all away. I've stopped watching, though. Nothing good could ever come of her endeavours, and so I stayed in my emerald tower while she escaped her dark one.

I tried to stay away from her as much I could these days, tricking myself into a naive deafness.

As the days went by I built up my city from inside this emerald prison, accompanied only by the ticks and whirs of my machines and odd contraptions. I hide - or hide, I should say - behind my work, the work we once shared. I was too ashamed to realize the truth behind the making of that vial woman, of how she became what she was now.

Green, ugly, evil.

She wasn't always like that.

I remember when she was beautiful.

Her hair had always been as black as the night, but then it had flowed like a river and shone like a jewel, unlike its current rough texture, mimicking the straw on her blasted broomstick. I'd never allowed myself to get close enough to see if her eyes were still so light a blue that they almost looked gray, but in my dreams they were a terrifying red. When she was young her teeth weren't crooked and her nose was still straight, the mole quite smaller. My younger self had always cherished her beauty marks, but now they repulsed me, almost as much as I repulsed myself.

We're both very old now, and I doubt there is any trace of our old selves left.

She wasn't green either, but the blame for that horrid colour can and have been placed on me.

I never intended to harm her, but I assume my young foolish arrogance led me to decieve her, rob her of a normal life where she didn't live in fear of dying at the sound of a distant thunder clap. Sometimes I find myself holding my breath whenever I hear them too. I destroyed her, I destroyed them all.

Her two sisters chose their paths because of me. One, good, and the other, bad, or whatever you'd like to classify them as.

The youngest followed the middle, both adopting 'wicked' titles, and the oldest, some would say wisest, became the symbol of hope for my citizens.

They all had been loved some time ago, but now only the blonde, who sparkled like the sun, awed my people with her quirky mode of transportation. I'm surprised the munchkins haven't named her their queen, but time will tell.

The youngest hailed from the East while my old girl reigned in the West. I don't know how she duplicated the broom travel, but I can only assume her sister introduced it to her. I'm still perplexed on how they recreated it without the contribution of science. The girl from the East never was smart enough to be my apprentice.

My conclusions have only led me to believe that she stole whatever was necessary, along with those silver slippers. They added a glimmer of beauty in her world of evil, though I find myself reluctant to accept the newly ruby colour. I'd intended to give them to the good sister, but they'd slipped from my grasp before I could.

I had liked the eldest, though, still do. She wasn't as intriguing as her younger sister had been, but I was still enamored by her sense of morality. She always helps to stem the flow of terror her sisters create, and for that I am grateful. In return I gifted her with the bubble travel, more stable than that of the broom.

My citizens always wondered how it all worked, and though I would never explain to them that I am a simple scientist who toys with magical kind, I am sometimes reluctant to keep up my facade. Helping the witches perfect their dirty secrets was never one of my greatest feats, but it was definitely the one to be remembered.

I'd been eager to help them both long ago, before the accident and all that it entailed. The broom idea came into play years before I ruined it all, as she had researched different kinds of objects available to be manipulated into flyable things, and with our combined efforts, after several prototypes, we were successful.

She'd always been smart, and I'd liked that about her. She loved working with the animals - mostly the monkeys, which explains that part of her empire - and she was always quick to learn. She loved learning, and I was always happy to teach. I liked her, plain and simple.

Maybe a bit more than liked, but I'll never know. It was years ago and it was all dust in the wind now, floating along with the scent of poppies.

I never meant to cause the accident - which I should really refer to as the explosion of events - but I'd been too caught up in my work, not noticing the imbalance between our combined powers, and it all happened so very fast that I would have never been able to stop it.

The green colour didn't show up until days afterward, after she'd been unconscious for some time. I hadn't bothered to hide the disgust on my face when she first came to me. After that we avoided each other day and night, as I found her completely revolting. I had failed to recognize that I was just as disgusting, though the marks were left on my soul, not my face. I was young and I didn't foresee the results of my actions.

As one desperate act to have me see her in a different light, she confessed to love me.

Blind hatred never did mix well with love, and I sent her away from me that night. She left my castle and never returned, becoming what she is now.

I have come to terms with my betrayal. While most people behold me as a great and powerful man, I am nothing but an sick, old, fake of a man who's ideas of vanity ruined his life.

Her life.

Their lives.

I tore a family apart in a day and I have never apologized. I probably never will. Not to her.

In one day I managed to tear a family apart and I have never apologized for my actions. I probably never will. Not to her, at least.

Maybe one day I'll fall to my knees in front of the good one and beg for mercy, but that day has yet to come.

One of them is bound to kill me if I ever set foot out of my glimmering home, if I came out from behind my contraptions and illusions.

I vowed once that it would never happen, and I plan to keep to that promise. Even if she plans to drag me out herself. I've given up trying to change her, to change myself, in order to make it all right again.

I've stayed hidden so that she cannot point at me and decree to our world what I have done to her and to it. I will never let the people who hold so much belief in me that I am not the god they think of, that I am a fraud.

I am only a weak, powerless, old man, and that is all I can be these days.


End file.
